“What are you doing?”
“Just bringing up the satellite, so I can take a look at these properties.” And then he sent a message to Levi, explaining where he was and requesting one of his team look into the bank records and the tax returns on the two brothers. “Levi said you’re supposed to update him,” he said, after the laptop beeped.
She snorted. “I figured you’d be doing that.”
“Yep, I’ll do it on a regular basis.”
“He’s a good guy,” she said suddenly.
“One of the best,” Bonaparte said, without even lifting his gaze from the laptop screen.
She studied his intensity. “I don’t understand this. Where are you getting the satellite feed from?”
He looked up at her, smiled, and said, “Levi.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “Oh. I don’t think I knew he had that.”
“Yeah. An agreement within an agreement within an agreement,” he said. “But it’s been invaluable for a lot of the cases Levi works on.”
“Is it giving us anything?”
“A lot of buildings on this property make no sense to me,” he said. “And they’re big. What was here before they bought it?”
She thought about it and said, “A whiskey distillery.” He looked at her in surprise. She smiled and said, “It didn’t do very well.”
“But that would explain the buildings.”
“That’s what I thought,” she said. “Some of them. Are they setting up shop? They haven’t applied for a license, as far as I’m aware.”
“I don’t know. I have no idea what they’re up to. Maybe nothing. For all we know, they looked at these two properties, wanting to have places near each other and within driving distance to town, and these are the ones they bought.” He paused. “Was there anything funny about them when they bought them?”
“Not that I know of,” she said. “I didn’t hear about anything being off.”
“Was it a clean sale? And, if you tell me again you don’t know, then we’ll go find the old owners.”
“You can’t,” she said suddenly.
“Why is that?” he said, shooting her a look.
She frowned. “Because they’re two of the dead.”
He settled back.
“Okay, so this is a little unnerving. Are these guys just killing people outright?”
“Well, it was a car accident,” she said. “We did investigate it, but the road conditions were nasty, and the car went over the edge of one of the highways here. It was actually quite a job to retrieve the bodies and to clear out the wreck.”
“And there was nothing foul about it?”
“At the time, I agreed with the coroner that it was accidental. But, as things started to stack up, I began to get suspicious.”
“A pretty convenient accident,” he said. “But it doesn’t seem like anything with these guys is accidental at all.”
“There’s no need for them to kill people,” she said. “These owners probably, eventually would have sold without a problem.”
“So, if the owners died, who would these assholes have bought these properties from?”
“I think one went to a cousin in New York, when the estate was settled. Then they approached him with a price and bought it.”
“Do you think he would have sold anyway?”
“No, the cousin was planning on moving here and getting the distillery back up and running,” she said quietly. She stared out the window, hating the thought that she might not have done her due diligence and might have missed something. “I’ll feel really shitty,” she said, “if it turns out they really were murdered.”
“What about this property here?”
“I understand they had gotten offers but, over the years, were never interested. However, with family health issues and property prices going straight up more recently, I understand he was more interested lately.”
“Well, let’s look into that one too,” he said.
“But still, the thing is, these guys have money,” she said in exasperation. “There was no need to kill anybody, unless the owner was adamant, and he didn’t want to sell. See? When all this was going on, it wasn’t on my radar. Only after people started dying did it all start to smell bad.”
“We do have wealthy people out there in this world who just want a property because they can’t have it. Maybe it was worth it to them. Maybe this is all some game,” he said.
“A game to kill people?”
“I’ve seen it happen time and time again,” he said. “Nothing is nice or easy about any of it, but it does happen.”
She shook her head. “Now that you mention the money issue, I would say something much more businesslike is about it.”
“Meaning?”
“If they bought the properties, it was likely for some reason that we don’t understand yet. And it’ll all be about money.”
“Is that all they are?”
“Yes,” she said, “you’re so right. They’re all about money. And showing it off.”
“Interesting. Do they have wives or partners of some sort?”
“No, they have decorations.”
He stared at her blankly for a moment and then started to laugh. “Okay, I get the idea. You feel fairly strongly about it too.”
“They come from the big city, and they are rich high-rollers, who cause chaos wherever they go. They go to the coffee shop or the bar, have absolutely nothing nice to say about any of it, throw enough money around to keep people happy and accepting of their ignorant behavior, and then they’re gone.”
“Well, there are more than a few towns with assholes like that,” he murmured.
“Yeah, but our town used to be nice. We didn’t have people like that.”
“Sorry,” he said. “When those types move in, they’re quite the pain in the ass.”
She snorted. “In this case they are claiming our town as home, if that’s what you call it, but that still doesn’t make it illegal, and absolutely nothing here proves that they did anything wrong.”
“Nope. I want to see the accident report on the guy who owned this property, and we’ll do an investigation into the other one to make sure it was aboveboard.”
“How will you do that?”
“I want to talk to the other owner.”
“Jeremy is in old folks home, and
